by Jane Hinchey
“Oh, geez,” Jenna whispered, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “We’d better stay out of her way until the frost is over.”
“The frost will never be over with that one,” I muttered, watching Liliana through narrowed eyes as she opened the door of her patrol car. Jackson approached her, face angry, and Jenna and I watched unabashedly as the two of them argued, right in front of us.
“I feel like we shouldn’t be watching this,” Jenna whispered. “But I also feel like we should pull up a chair and bring out the popcorn.”
“I’m right there with you.” We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the facial expressions and arm gestures revealed a very heated discussion was going down. And then the pair of them looked my way. Ducking my chin I turned my back to them and pretended to be busy with my phone.
“Oh!” Jenna snorted. “Shoulda guessed.”
“Don’t,” I warned
“What? I get it now. She thinks you’re the reason they broke up.”
“Well, I’m not.” I knew I was pouting. And I knew that because I had originally thought that too. That Jackson had broken up with her because he had feelings for me. He’d blown up my phone while I’d been in Australia. And ever since I’d been waiting for him to ask me out, only nothing. Zip. Nada.
It reminded me a little too much of Blake and the way he’d bailed, leaving me hanging with no idea what had happened.
“And now you’re frowning.” Jenna pressed a thumb hard between my eyebrows.
“Hey!” I protested, rubbing at the spot.
“You’ll get lines. And why are you frowning? I thought you liked Jackson?”
“I do. I was thinking about Blake.”
She rolled her eyes. “So many men, so little time.”
“Ha, ha.”
The fire crew rolled up their hose and prepared to leave. Now that the excitement was over the onlookers began to disperse.
“Let’s take a stroll along the beach. We’ll come back when everyone has gone. And by everyone, I mean Officer Miles. I get the feeling she will not leave while you’re still here.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Jenna was right. Liliana sat in her patrol car, eyes narrowed and pinned on me. Jackson was nowhere in sight and I figured he’d left already.
“You’re right. Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Half an hour later we returned, creeping along the row of beach huts like fugitives. I was paranoid Liliana was lying in wait and I wouldn’t put it past her to slap me in cuffs and take me down to the station for interfering with a crime scene.
Archie appeared out of nowhere, scaring the ever-living-beejeesus out of me.
“Archie!” I whispered, crouching to give him a pat. “What are you doing here? I thought Gran was dropping you home?”
Meow.
“Maybe you left a window open, and he got out?” Jenna said, dropping to her knees in the sand to give Archie a fuss.
“Probably. He likes the beach.” Standing back up, I looked at the huts in the darkness. The once bright blue hut belonging to Daniel Griffin was now smeared with soot, and the scent of smoke and water hung heavy in the air.
“I’m going to look around.” Approaching the hut, I peered around the corner, but didn’t have a direct line of sight to the parking lot. Well, that was something. If I couldn’t see the lot, then Liliana couldn’t see me. If she was still there.
In between the narrow space between two huts, the structures blocked almost all light. Dark and spooky didn’t begin to cover it. Pulling out my phone, I turned on the flashlight app and swung it around. Nothing. Moving back to the front of the hut, I tried the door. Locked.
“You aren’t thinking of breaking in, are you?” Jenna asked.
“Nope.” I wasn’t that stupid. Liliana was just dying for an excuse to arrest me; I wasn’t about to make it easy for her.
“The damage isn’t that bad.” Jenna was shining the light from her phone on the rear of the hut and I moved to join her. “Just superficial. But look at this.” She nudged a pile of debris with her foot. “It looks like someone set fire to something else and the fire caught hold of the hut.”
“By accident?”
“Hard to say.”
Archie’s meowing interrupted us. Long, loud, and insistent, followed by a girl’s voice saying, “Go away, go away!”
“Archie?” I followed the sounds into the shrubs behind the huts only to discover him winding around and head butting the crouched figure of Hannah Burton.
“Hannah? What are you doing back here?”
Knowing she’d been busted she stood, dusting off her legs. “Stupid cat,” she muttered to Archie, who was now nosing at a backpack I hadn’t seen earlier. She reached for it, but I darted forward and snatched it from her grasp.
“Hey!” she protested, making another grab for the bag, but I held it out of reach. “Give that back! It’s mine!”
“What do you have in here that you don’t want me to see?”
“Nothing!” But the look of guilt gave her away. Keeping one eye on her, I unzipped the backpack and peered inside. Not much to see. Some books, a scarf. But Hannah’s agitation told me there was more to this.
“Jenna!” I called. “Come here a second. I need your light.”
“What’s up?” Jenna appeared seconds later. “Oh, Hi Hannah, what are you doing here?”
“That’s what I asked. She was crouched in the bushes. Hiding.”
Jenna pinned Hannah with a look. “Oh.”
“Exactly. I was just going to take a peek in her bag, but I could use your light.”
“No problem. Here.” Jenna shone the light from her phone into Hannah’s backpack and that’s when I saw it. A lighter. Up ending the bag, I dumped all the contents onto the ground. The scarf unraveled, revealing a can of lighter fluid.
“Oh, Hannah.” Jenna sighed, shaking her head.
Tears rolled down Hannah’s cheeks, but she didn’t say a word. Jenna and I looked at each other.
“Did you light the fire?” I asked. She nodded.
“Why?” I pressed. She shrugged.
“Did you light the other fires?” Jenna asked. “The fence and the bin?”
Hannah nodded, shoulders hunched forward. She sniffed, wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“Were you trying to set fire to the hut?” I nodded towards the Griffins’ beach hut.
“No! That was an accident. I just…” She broke off, sniffed again, looked up at the night sky and let out a shuddering sigh. “I couldn’t leave it unfinished. I don’t know why, honestly. But I had to come back and finish it.”
“Finish what?”
“What I started.”
“What did you start Hannah?”
She looked around, eyes a little wild. Dropping the backpack, I stepped over the contents and grasped her hands. “Take a deep breath and tell me exactly what happened.”
She did. “I was here last night,” she said, “to set the fire.”
“Only something stopped you. Emily. Was she here last night?”
Hannah nodded. “Yes.” She sniffed again and Jenna handed her a tissue.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t mean to kill her! I swear!” Hannah wailed, face distraught. Jenna and I stiffened but listened as Hannah spoke, her words running together, “She texted me, asked me to meet her here. She was upset. Like, really upset. Only I got here before her and while I was waiting the idea to light a fire just came to me. So I dragged all these dead leaves and driftwood and stuff and was getting ready when Emily arrived, and she knew, before I even lit it, that I was the one lighting fires and I panicked.”
The tears were falling thick and fast and she drew in a shuddering breath.
“Then what happened?” I pressed.
“I pushed her,” Hannah whispered, “and she fell. And the sound of her head hitting a rock… it was awful. She just lay there, not moving, and I knew I’d killed her.” Another pause, then
she whispered, “I ran away.”
Jenna and I looked at each other over Hannah’s bent head.
“Was that the last time you saw her?” Jenna asked.
Hannah nodded. “I should have told someone. Should have got help. But I was too scared.” So Hannah had left her friend unconscious on the beach. Not much of a friend.
“But you came back. Tonight. To light the fire. Why?”
“I had to! I can’t explain it. All last night I resisted, I wanted to come back and light it, but Emily was here and I couldn’t face what I’d done. But then this morning… you found her. So I knew I could come back tonight and light the fire.”
Hannah was a pyromaniac. She couldn’t resist the compulsion to light fires. And her version of events, of pushing Emily and Emily hitting her head fitted with the blunt trauma injury they’d found.
“Keep an eye on her,” I said to Jenna, moving away. “I’m calling Jackson.”
“Sure.”
Leaving them in the bushes, I made my way back to the beach and the hut, dialing Jackson as I went.
“Are you okay?” Jackson answered.
“You know it is entirely possible for people to answer the phone with a greeting and not a question,” I responded.
“I saw the way Liliana treated you tonight,” he ground out, clearly still angry at his ex. “I’m sorry she did that.”
“It’s okay Jackson. She’s hurting. I get that.”
I dug through the sand at the back of the hut with one hand, feeling around until I found it. The rock, hidden beneath a layer of sand, the one that Emily cracked her head on.
“What are you doing?” Jackson asked. “You’re making strange grunting noises.”
“I know who’s been lighting the fires. And how Emily got the injury to the back of her head.”
“Oh?”
“Meet me at the Griffins’ beach hut.” I hung up, took some snaps of the bloodstained rock I’d just unearthed, then made my way back to where Jenna and Hannah were waiting.
“Detective Ward is on his way,” I said. Hannah nodded.
Scooping up her empty backpack, I handed it to her. “Gather up your stuff.” While she did that, I whispered to Jenna that I’d found the rock and she hightailed it back to the hut to take her own photos.
“Come on, Archie.” I picked up my cat, promising an extra special treat for revealing Hannah’s hiding spot to us. Without him we’d have never known she was there.
It didn’t take Jackson long to reach us. Hannah and I had joined Jenna at the rear of the hut.
“Would someone like to tell me what’s going on?” he asked, doing his best to shake sand out of his shoe.
I filled him in on what Hannah had told us. He studied the frightened teenager before him, shaking his head.
“Were you hiding in the bushes this entire time?” Jackson asked her.
She nodded.
“Why? Were you going to light another fire? Did you decide that the beach huts made perfect targets?”
“No.” She sniffed. “I just… it was where Emily… I couldn’t….”
I sympathized. She thought her friend had died here and couldn’t bring herself to leave, couldn’t forgive herself for what she’d done, and for running away rather than fetching help.
“What happens now?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Jackson had no other choice than to arrest Hannah.
Jackson pressed his lips into a grim line. “I’m going to take Hannah to the station where she’ll be questioned about her involvement in Emily’s death – and charged with arson. I can’t rule out a manslaughter charge at this point.” He swung his head toward Jenna. “This has to stay off the record. I’d ask you to delete your photos, but I’m pretty sure you have them backed up to the cloud already.”
She gave him a cheeky grin but didn’t reply. Jenna wasn’t a cutthroat journalist. She knew Hannah’s arrest would have an impact on the town, and Hannah’s family. She’d handle the story with sensitivity.
“I’m going to send Officer Miles back to re-evaluate the scene,” he added, cocking his head toward the rock we’d unearthed.
“Right,” I said. “Well if you don’t need me, Archie and I will head home.” I had no desire to bump into Liliana again. She’d no doubt be furious we’d discovered something she’d missed, but to be fair, the rock was submerged beneath layers of sand. We’d only found it because we’d been looking for it.
“I will need your version of tonight’s events,” Jackson said, taking Hannah’s arm and leading her around the front of the huts and towards the parking lot. “But it can wait until tomorrow. Call into the station when you have the time.”
“Will do.”
Jenna and I stood side by side, watching until they were out of sight. As soon as I heard the roar of Jackson’s engine I turned to her.
“Right, we probably have about five minutes, maybe less, until Officer Miles turns up.”
Jenna frowned at me. “Okay?”
I rolled my eyes, dropping Archie to the sand and hurrying back to the space between the huts. “To see if we can find Emily’s bag or phone!”
“Oh! Right!” Jenna hurried after me, dropping to her knees by my side as I dug my hands through the sand, searching. “It would make sense if she fell here, was knocked out, that maybe her phone is here too. I doubt her bag would be buried beneath the sand though, way too big not to be noticed.”
“True.” I fanned my fingers out beneath the sand and frantically crawled along. Nothing. And time was running out.
“I don’t think it’s here,” Jenna said, sitting back on her haunches and dusting off her hands.
“Wait. Lemme see if Gran has her number. If she calls it, maybe we’ll hear it ring.”
I called Gran who answered the phone breathless.
“Gran? Are you okay?”
A pause. “I’m fine, Harper love. What is it?” She sounded… different. Odd. Her voice lower than usual.
“I was wondering if you had Emily’s number? And if you do, can you call it? I want to see if I can hear it ring. Maybe she dropped it at the beach and it's covered in sand.”
“Why didn’t the cops think of this?” she asked.
“They probably did. They can trace a phone these days so I’d imagine it’s probably turned off, or the battery is dead. This is a long shot.”
“Or it’s at the bottom of the ocean,” Jenna cut in.
“Or that.” I agreed. But Emily’s murder had been one of opportunity. It wasn’t premeditated. How would the killer know that she’d be knocked out in her scuffle with Hannah? I’m sure that’s what happened. The blow hadn’t killed her, merely rendered her unconscious. Someone else had been on the scene and they may have taken her phone and bag to dump with the body. All I could do was hope they’d missed something.
“Okay Gran, I’m hanging up. Call Emily’s cell, and if it goes to voicemail, don’t leave a message, just hang up. If the phone’s here, I’m hoping we’ll hear it ring.”
“On it.” Gran hung up.
Jenna and I looked at each other. We didn’t have much time until Liliana arrived.
“We’ll give it—” I started to say, only to suddenly stop when I heard a phone ringing.
“Oh my God!” Jenna grabbed my arm so hard I’d have bruises. We looked at the structure before us. “It’s coming from inside the hut!”
Chapter Six
Chewing on my nail, I pondered what to do. Liliana would be here any minute and she wouldn’t be happy to see me, but this was a major breakthrough.
“You go,” I said to Jenna. “No point you being in the line of fire too.”
“You’re sure?” Jenna hesitated.
“Absolutely. Go meet Monica, let her know what’s happened. After I’m done here, I’m going to check in on Gran. I think something's up.” She’d sounded strange on the phone and given she was eighty and lived alone… I tried not to dwell on the possibilities.
I walked with Jenna to the parki
ng lot and watched as she hurried towards the main street, no doubt taking a detour to the Whitefall Cove Tribune offices on the way. Crossing my arms, I waited for the patrol car I knew was on the way. I didn’t have to wait long. Headlights swung into the parking lot, blinding me with their intensity before flicking off.
“Why are you here, Jones?” Liliana popped the trunk and climbed out of the patrol car, her blue uniform still crisp although she’d been wearing it all day. I wondered if it was a fae thing that had her looking cool and calm no matter the weather?
“I made another discovery.” I did my best not to appear on the defensive, made a conscious effort not to cross my arms across my chest, no matter how much I wanted to.
“Another discovery?” Her eyes bored into me, cold as steel.
“I was the one who found Hannah hiding in the bushes. And the rock we think Emily hit her head on.”
She paused in lifting a case out of the trunk, muttered something under her breath I didn’t catch, then continued on, slamming the trunk.
“And what’s that?” She stepped onto the sand, heading toward the beach huts.
“Emily’s phone is in the Griffins’ beach hut.”
She scoffed at that, not even pausing. I hurried after her.
“Doubtful. We have IT tracing it.”
“Have you tried calling her number?” I asked. “Because Gran just did and coincidentally a phone rang at the exact same time from inside the hut.”
We reached the blue hut in question and Liliana put the case on the sand, flicking the locks to reveal forensic paraphernalia.
“Thanks for the information. I’ll check it out.” She hoisted out a lantern, flicked it on, the light illuminating the dark alley between the two huts. “You can go.” She paused. “Jesus. What were you doing here, building sandcastles?” This time giving me a look that told me she was less than impressed.
I shrugged my shoulders. “We were looking for her phone. Figured if the rock was hidden beneath the sand then maybe Emily dropped her phone and it got buried too.”
Liliana paused, considering what I’d said.
